


Memento Mori

by LuckyLikesLemons



Series: Minyoon Forensic AUs [2]
Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Crimes & Criminals, Forensics, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24913840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyLikesLemons/pseuds/LuckyLikesLemons
Summary: He is alive in a dying city. A city of corruption, vice and sin. A city that does not care for justice,  a city that revels in its evil, proud and unabashed, a cold and cruel and calculating mistress.Seungyoon has been enslaved to her since the moment he was born, and like many of her denizens, he knows that he cannot escape.AKAMinYoon, Slow burn, Forensic cleaner AU set in Dystopian Seoul.
Relationships: Kang Seungyoon/Song Minho | Mino
Series: Minyoon Forensic AUs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823338
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Memento Mori

**Author's Note:**

> I am well aware that I have other stories and collections for MinYoon that are still in progress, but this plot was too good to pass up.
> 
> I think this is my best story yet. 
> 
> Updates will be unpredictable for now because I'm arranging university transfers and studies and generally trying to get my life in order. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are soul food. The more there are, the more I'll be encouraged to continue ❤️

_**Omnium Rerum Principia Parva Sunt** _

' _The beginnings of all things are small.'_

* * *

The skies over Seoul are dark and grim, scudding and roiling with the promise of storms.

Clouds tower over skyscrapers like ghostly sceptres of white, the city lights barely managing to pierce through a hazy veil of dust and black soot.

The streets are still busy, choked with cars and trucks and broken people. The hot tarmac pulsates beneath his feet with an energy that seeps through his skin and thrums through his veins, amber gold and heavy like liquor sloshing in a glass.

The street lamps flicker like fireflies, illuminating shadows and drowning light. They create their own pantomime of dancing silhouettes and dizzying umbra, of dark spaces and white vacuum, and they pull him in with little effort.

* * *

  
He is alive in a dying city. A city of corruption, vice and sin. A city that does not care for justice, a city that revels in its evil, proud and unabashed, a cold and cruel and calculating mistress.

Seungyoon has been enslaved to her since the moment he was born, and like many of her denizens, he knows that he cannot escape.

So he learns to accept her, her knives and barbs and steel knotted wire.

He learns to accept her tyranny and her injustice, learns to receive her abuse and her criticism, learns to bend and bow and beg until she gets tired of him and let's him live.

* * *

Living in Seoul is difficult.

It demands hardships and harassment and ritual sacrifice. 

It does not give a lot in return.

* * *

Seungyoon sighs as he trudges wearily up the steps of his housing estate, a dilapidated block of flats hidden away in a filthy corner of the city. 

The stench of broken sewer piepes and stale cigarette smoke permeates the air. Luckily, the municipal workers had come along to hose down the walls the previous night, so the odour of urine isn't so apparent. He's very grateful.

He stumbles across a man sprawled out on the landing lying splayed in a pool of suspiciously dark liquid that he hopes is beer and not blood. He manages to catch hold of the bannister in time, but not before banging his shin on the hard, unforgiving stair. 

There's a sudden, excruciating moment of pain.

Blinking back tears, he hobbles down the corridor towards his shoddy, one bedroom apartment. The door creaks open on rusty hinges, a fleck of mint green paint falling from the peeling frame as soon as he slams it shut.

* * *

He glances around his home. The ceiling is damp, spotted with mould. There's a bed, a sordid affair in iron with a military issued mattress, smothered in dirty sheets and two weeks of laundry. There's a wardrobe, empty save for dead moths and dusty cobwebs. A chest of drawers filled with knick-knacks and old newspapers. A bathroom of cockroaches and unseen horrors, hidden from site by a musty curtain he'd drawn across two nails. An unwieldy granite slab poking out from the wall, shielding the lone electric socket. On top of it sits a kettle, a teacup with no handle, a metal dish piled up with packets of outdated ramen and dry seaweed that he'd salvaged from grocery refuse tips.

The windows are grilled, locked and double bolted, sealed over with splatters of pigeon excrement and centuries worth of grime. 

A fitting prison, he thinks.

The only source of fresh air is a vent in the corner where an air conditioning unit had been fixed before. Through it he can see a 10 by 10 cm square space of forboding night sky. Sometimes a star, if he's lucky.

He stares through it now, wonders if there's a world out there that's easier, brighter, cleaner than this one.

The rain pours down in protest, thunder and lightning clashing across the skies. The scent of petrichor and rotten fruit wafts up to him from the streets.

The scent is familiar.

The scent is _home_.

* * *

  
Seoul tells him -

**No.**

**No.**

**You were born here Kang Seungyoon.**

**Some day, you will die here.**

_**You belong to me.** _

Seungyoon smiles, a bitter, tragic smile.

His city has spoken. 

Who is he to refuse?

* * *

5 AM to 11 AM.

3 PM to 9 PM.

10 PM to 1 AM.

Three shifts, back breaking work. 

Kang Seungyoon is a janitor at the district hospital. He is also a trucker for a local barbecue, a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant that dished out to construction workers and street cleaners. In between, he waits tables, stocks chemicals, does odd jobs and deliveries.

None of these makes ends meet.

* * *

He had been born in hard times. His father had gambled away the family fortune, squandered his borrowed money on drink and promptly run off, leaving him and his mother at the mercy of loan sharks and the local mafia. The debt had fallen to him after her untimely illness.

Seungyoon had born the responsibility of providing for them both, leaving him in an abyss he's still struggling hard to crawl out of. 

His mother was still in recovery at the charity hospice, the only place that had been willing to treat her without asking for too much. 

He tries to meet up with her once in a while, tries to convince her that it's okay, that they'll get out of this hell somehow. The reassurances are thin, full of false cheer and desperate optimism. They convince no one.

* * *

It's hard, but he can't give up.

Giving up means defeat.

In Seoul, defeat means _death_.

* * *

  
Everyday, the city sneers. Laughs at him, taunts him - **is that it, is that all you can take? Will this be the thing that breaks you, Kang Seungyoon?**

Everyday, he fights back.

_No._

_No._

_I may be small, I may be fragile, but I am not weak._

* * *

It tests his patience sometimes, wears him down, whittles him into tiny, shaven wood chips when he was once a proud tree.

But then he sees the headlines - gunfights, stabbings, gangwars and cocaine cartels, a girl gone missing down an alleyway, never to be seen again.  
  
When he reads those, he feels oddly grateful.

 _Thank you_ , he says to Seoul. _At least you didn't make me one of them. Yet._

* * *

The city preens.

**Well, I do care about you. Sometimes.**

_Sometimes_.

It is enough.

* * *

Follow me on Twitter: [LuckyLikesLemon](https://twitter.com/LuckyLikesLemon)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope it set an interesting tone. Do leave kudos and comments after you finish reading, I'd love to know what you think ❤️
> 
> Come follow me on Twitter for spoilers and updates 🙃 I need more friends who ship Minyoon 😅


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